Pro-Cuba embargo PAC money going to Dems

WASHINGTON, Nov. 16 (UPI) -- Those who support continuing an economic embargo against Cuba have heavily shifted their campaign contributions to Democrats, a U.S. watchdog group says.

Figures compiled by Public Campaign, a Washington group that supports public financing of election campaigns, shows that pro-embargo political action committees have shifted from giving 71 percent of their contributions to Republicans in 2004 to giving 76 percent to Democrats so far in the 2010 campaign, the Washington publication The Hill reported Monday.

Close to $150,000 for the 2010 campaign has been raised by the pro-embargo PACs for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee so far, the group reported. The committee is chaired by Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., a Cuban-American who opposes lifting the U.S. trade embargo on Havana, The Hill said.

"Sen. Menendez has raised more in the last eight months from (pro-embargo) hard-liners than his predecessors at the DSCC raised over four years," it quotes the report as saying.

"Our committee always gets criticized for its political activism," Mauricio Claver-Carone, a director of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC, told The Hill. "We are not going to apologize for using our constitutional rights to support and oppose candidates, and we are proud of it."